Network management

1. ‫سمانه‬
‫رنجبر‬
‫شبکه‬ ‫مدیریت‬

2.  Network managers engage in several day-to-day activities, including
bridging, networking, and stabilizing relationships. Our study shows that this
choice needs to be taken in combination with certain network
characteristics, such as network development stage, connectivity, and trust.
It sheds light on four different combinations of activities and network
characteristics that are simultaneously able to lead to perceived high
network performance. It also suggests three approaches to network
management in networks that differ in their development stage, connectivity
and trust: stabilize, stabilize and connect, stabilize and develop.

3.  Some scholars have focused on the differences between managing single
organizations and managing organizational networks
 Other scholars have focused on the relationship between management and
outcomes of public networks. They have proved the positive impact of
network management on network performance, and grouped managerial
activities into four strategies, such as creating new organizational
arrangements, connecting network partners,
 which combinations of network characteristics and managerial activities can
simultaneously lead to high network performance network development
stage, connectivity, and trust

4. the importance of network management and network managers and their
impact on network performance.
 Scholars have started to explore whether certain managerial activities
rather than others should be chosen to ensure high performance in different
network settings.
 three managerial activities of facilitating, mediating, and leading, and
explored the importance of network management in combination with a
selection of contextual, structural and functioning network mechanisms.

5. selecting the best partners and resources for the network, establishing the
relevant rules to govern partner interaction, promoting partners’ commitment,
and balancing partners’ contrasting goals so as to fit them into the network’s
goal.
 connective activities (namely networking, bridging, and stabilizing), and
explore whether, in highly performing networks, managers opt for one
activity or another in combination with network development stage,
connectivity, and trust.

6.  Network development stage
mature stage.
 Network connectivity
 A highly-interconnected network is a network where information, resources
and support can circulate easily; it is also a network where trust can be
easily built and maintained
 Network trust
 trust can enhance collaboration and network performance.
 trust increases the predictability of partners’ behaviour,thus reducing
uncertainty and transaction costs, and thereby stimulating actors’
investment in the network

7.  QCA allows, in fact, to consider configurations of factors (or conditions, in
QCA parlance), and not their independent effect on the outcome.
 different paths of conditions as capable to lead to the same outcome.

9.  the more cases that fail to meet this rule for necessary conditions, the lower
will be the consistency score
 our conditions, consistency scores range from 0.48 to 0.72 with the
implication that none of the six conditions, both in their presence as well as
their absence, is necessary for causing high network performance.
 Analysis of sufficient conditions
 The analysis of sufficient conditions lists causal combinations of the given
conditions and the expected outcome in a present/absent dichotomy.

10.  1-it confirms the need to enact different managerial activities in combination
with the network’s structural characteristics
 Combined effects of structural, functional and managerial factors on
network performance.
 Our results, in fact, invite network managers to adopt an approach that may
be oriented to stabilize, stabilize and connect, or to stabilize and develop,
depending on their network’s specific combination of development stage,
connectivity and trust
 2-higher network maturity combined with high connectivity allows the
manager to add bridging to existing stabilizing activities,
 3-third approach, mature, connected and trust-based networks allow the
network manager to adopt an outward-looking approach, and to focus on
networking in order to expand the network’s boundaries

11.  not just any configuration of connective activities may be expected to
produce positive outcomes.
 network managers, based on existing network features, need to think
carefully how to distribute their attention among connective activities, and
especially between those that extend beyond the network’s boundaries and
those that are more inward-looking.
 various conditions interact in causing (perceived) high performance
(conjunctural causation) and different configurations of conditions may
result in similar positive outcomes (equifinality).
 On the other side, it allows to identify paths towards (perceived) high
network performance involving alternative combinations of managerial
activities.
 the importance of stabilizing. Stabilizing and consolidating the relationships
among network partners seem to be ‘nonstop’ activities for the network
manager.

12.  (1) In young, connected and trust-based networks, (perceived) high network
performance is favoured by a focus on stabilizing activities.
 (2) In mature and connected networks, (perceived) high network
performance is
 favoured by the combination of stabilizing and bridging activities.
 (3) In mature, connected and trust-based networks, (perceived) high
network performance is favoured by the combination of stabilizing and
networking
 activities.